“Lucy and her husband were now living in Darrington, at the home of her parents. Mother wrote me that the Sunday school to which I had belonged all the years I had spent at home would celebrate the eve of Christmas with the unloading of a Christmas tree, and wouldn’t I come home for that and gladden the hearts of my father and mother, now growing old so fast without me? That evening, the same day upon which I had received the letter, love came tapping again at the door of my heart. This time I opened to welcome the timid caller. ‘We are going home together,’ it said, ‘to mother and to father, to Lucy and her husband. We will bring the good words of cheer. This Christmas shall see a reunion at the old home. It will seem good to be there, and to meet Lucy with her husband at the church, and to see them happy in their love for each other will put my soul at rest, and give me another chance to meet happiness should the fates favor me.’
“A three years’ absence from the old place had made changes, and most of all in myself. The change of dress from country to city, the mannerisms acquired by constant mingling with strangers, had given me the air which in the country is interpreted as being akin to presumptuousness. My school friends approached me with an uneasiness of manner, while the conversation with the older members of families was limited to a few questions concerning my arrival and departure. The ladies of the committee in charge of the entertainment flitted about the Christmas tree, which was placed in front of the pulpit at the head of the main aisle and at the end of the edifice opposite the entrance. I had not yet removed my great coat, and, hat in hand, was strolling with mother up the aisle to the family pew. We were very early, and but a few had taken their seats. Some one of the group of ladies surrounding the tree had called the attention of her co-workers to the approaching stranger. At the instant one of their number darted down the aisle. A cry of joy had escaped her lips, and in a frenzy of hysteria she fell into my arms. It was Lucy Maynard. Tenderly I placed her in the very pew from where I had so often stolen the childish glances at the same brown, curly head and beautiful eyes of my Lucy, who now lay in a dead faint upon the cushions.
“‘You must care for her, mother,’ I said, as I turned hastily to leave. ‘I am going away; and, now that you know my secret, you must always pray that my happiness may some time be returned.’”
CHAPTER X.
Adieu to the Mining Camp.
“Soon after I gave up my position in the city. The money which I had accumulated I determined to spend in trying to forget, to stamp out of my life the truth of the love which existed between Lucy and me. She was married—I was a gentleman. It was too late. God might right the wrong which had been done, but in the meantime two souls were to suffer apart. For another two years I kept away from home, my dear old parents never urging me to return. I was successful in my business ventures. Then sad news again came to me. A fatal illness had attacked my father. I reached his bedside in time to hear him say, ‘Edmond, I would have done the same were I in your place.’ We buried him in a plot by the church, in the shadow of the steeple at the bidding of whose bell he had so many years come to meeting, and now from the old belfry tower it tolled the last sad notes for the departed.
“Lucy and her husband had been traveling for her health, under the advice of the old village doctor. A change of scene, he told her husband, would do her good. A month I spent at the old homestead. Mother had taken my hand in hers one evening, as we sat under the porch, I in the same chair where, at the same time of the evening, father read the weekly paper, and many a time, with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, and in his shirt sleeves, had engaged in a heated discussion with mother over some editorial comment favorable to his views on one of his pet subjects. ‘Stay with me, Edmond,’ she said. ‘It won’t be long now. For nearly sixty years we have never been separated for more than a day—your father from me. It—won’t—be—long.’ I felt her grasp of my hand loosen, and she sank back into her chair. Her left hand lay limp in the folds of her dress, an ashy whiteness had suffused her face, a sweet, heavenly smile rested over her features. Then I knew she had joined my father. Side by side their bodies rest in the shadow of the village church, while their spirits have joined the angels and are looking down at us now.